


Five Times Colonel Tigh Conceded to Admiral Adama, and One Time He Didn't

by puszysty



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-13
Updated: 2009-04-13
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puszysty/pseuds/puszysty





	Five Times Colonel Tigh Conceded to Admiral Adama, and One Time He Didn't

**Five times Colonel Tigh Conceded to Admiral Adama...**

**1.**

"Ellen is not a frakking cylon," Saul insisted.

Bill kept walking, eyes focused and steps steady toward his destination. "People just don't show up without anyone having noticed them Saul. Not unless they're cylons."

"You don't know what happened on that ship. We've been running for our lives, jumping around the galaxy, trying to scrounge up whatever we've got left. People are bound to miss things in that kind of chaos."

Commander Adama turned on his heel and stopped abruptly. The look on his face warned "don't test me". One moment of that look was enough to make most of the crew back down and walk away. But not Saul Tigh. Saul Tigh had known Bill Adama long enough to know exactly how far he could push without garnering serious punishment. Which was a lot farther than most people, because Bill Adama had known Saul Tigh a long time too.

So Saul kept pushing. "You've known Ellen for over twenty years Bill. Frak, we've been married almost thirty. You think I wouldn't know by now if I was married to one of those frakking skinjobs? Ellen is **not** a cylon."

The Commander stared Saul down, Bill's eyes piercing through him. It was clear he wasn't backing down. "I'm having her tested and that's an order Colonel. We need to start testing the fleet and right now there's no better place to start than Ellen."

Which was bullshit and Saul knew it. The best place to start would be the Commander himself; that would finally force to President to shut up for once. But Bill's pride was too great to submit himself first. He needed a lead off, and Ellen was convenient. If the Old Man wanted to doubt his word now, fine. Ellen didn't need a scene made of it anyway. But he'd be the last of the command staff to volunteer his DNA.

"Aaaaalright," Saul dragged out. "But don't expect me not to say 'I told you so' when it shows she's not one."

**2.**

"No," Saul spat out abruptly.

"Just do it Saul. Everyone else is down there already." Saul could sense the disdain in Bill's voice. Not that he could blame him. Most of crew was abandoning ship, forgetting their loyalty and the oaths they'd pledged however many years ago. Saul didn't like them much currently either. He knew exactly where his loyalties lie. He wasn't going anywhere.

"Since when should I give a frak about what everyone else is doing? My life is here, on this battlestar. You know that."

"It's time you had a new life Saul." Bill took a swig of his glass of ambrosia. It didn't look like he really meant what he was saying. "You owe it to Ellen." Ellen. Yes, there was that. She had been begging Saul to bring her down to the surface of New Caprica, gods only knew why. New Caprica was nothing but a haphazard tent city where the residents slaved away in the mud. They had it much better up on Galactica. He didn't get why she couldn't see that.

"I owe it to you to stay with Galactica," Saul countered. No dirt pile was worth breaking his oath, even if Ellen was involved.

"Just go Saul." His face was stern, but the Old Man's eyes betrayed his frustration. Not with Saul Tigh, but with the way things had gone since landing on New Caprica. Saul knew it was killing Bill Adama to see the man's one true pride and joy, the military, be rendered useless before his eyes. He couldn't bring himself to argue now. Bill needed someone who could still follow orders. As little as he liked them, Saul Tigh would always consider himself the man who would follow orders. That was his duty under his oath.

"Yes sir." Saul saluted, then turned swiftly to go pack his things.

**3.**

"You want to let that traitor back into military? Into the CIC? He's a collaborator Bill, a traitor to humanity!" Saul glared over to where Felix Gaeta sat down awkwardly at his old console.

"He got your ass off that planet, Saul. If I were you, I'd be grateful." Bill Adama was glaring, not at Gaeta, but at him. Saul ignored his glance and squinted angrily at Gaeta. Grateful. To the man who'd done nothing while he sat in jail and had his eyeball gouged out. Who'd led Ellen to collaborate to save him instead. He'd been forced to kill Ellen for her crimes. Gaeta deserved the same fate.

"I shoulda airlocked him when I had the chance."

Bill Adama suddenly grabbed Saul by the collar and shoved him against the wall. "If I find out about any more people getting airlocked, I will throw you out one myself. The President pardoned everyone of their crimes on New Caprica, and that includes Lieutenant Gaeta. Understood, Colonel?"

Saul rolled his eyes at Bill. He hadn't been down on that frakking planet. Bill didn't understand. Didn't understand that someone needed to pay for what happened there. Frak him. And frak President Roslin. "You don't frakking care what President Roslin thinks. You just want someone who can plot a decent jump."

Bill shoved Saul against the wall again, pinning him there with all the force of one arm. Anger flared in his eyes. Saul was wrong. This wasn't about Gaeta at all. And that made him even more infuriated.

Saul thought of a number of accusations he could spit at Bill Adama. But he knew none of them would do anything to change Bill's mind. And actually taking Gaeta back to the airlock to finish the job would only drive Bill closer to Roslin. If Bill wanted to let himself be driven by her, then so be it, but he knew there'd be consequences for the Old Man later. Saul knew where that road led. And he had an empty eye socket to prove it.

**4.**

"It's suicide Bill!"

"I know that Saul. But I don't want to keep going without her."

Bill Adama was being an idiot. It wasn't something Saul liked to think about the Old Man, but it was the truth. Bill Adama was being an idiot. There was no way Saul Tigh was becoming Admiral of the Fleet. He'd tell Bill it had to do with last time he had been left in command, but that wasn't the real reason he was refusing. Saul knew he could command the fleet this time: he'd learned from his mistakes and for some reason, after New Caprica, the fleet seemed to respect him more. Saul Tigh was really refusing because he couldn't bear to watch his best friend give up on all the people of the fleet had put in to finding the planet called Earth to chase after a ship full of cylons and Laura Roslin.

"You took an oath Bill. To these people. This ship. You're just going to walk out on that?" Saul asked, his voice daring Bill to defy that the past three years had mattered.

"There are some things more important than an oath Saul." He didn't expect that statement to sting, he knew it was coming, but it did. It wasn't an accusation, Bill wouldn't do that after it had been this long, but it felt like one. If he could do New Caprica over, would he have killed Ellen again? Would he still choose his oath over her? Saul had always thought he'd say yes, but now, after things with the cylon in the brig and Bill Adama standing here about to chase after Laura Roslin, he wasn't so sure.

"I'd have thought you'd realized that by now." And that definitely _was_ an accusation. Not quite as harsh as some of the accusations he'd received on account of the cylon, but oddly, this one hurt more. It took all the restraint he had not to punch Bill in the face. To shout at him that it hadn't been that easy. That for all the battles and sticky situations in his life, that had been the hardest decision he'd ever had to make.

But Saul let Bill go without another word. It was stupid, but for Bill, it was the right thing to do. And he wouldn't allow Bill to see it, wouldn't let Bill know how weak he'd become when the Old Man, and the fleet, was counting on someone strong. It was hard enough admitting to yourself that you'd made the one big mistake that couldn't ever be fixed.

**5.**

Saul stood pondering the Admiral's story. It was a challenge. Which fox was he going to be? Saul knew what Bill wanted him to choose. Fight back. That's what they'd been doing this whole time, not just the last three years, but the entire time they'd known each other. Fight back.

But Saul didn't much feel like fighting back anymore. Look at all the good it had done.

He'd fought back against the cylons for thirty years...then turned out to be one. He'd fought back on New Caprica...and lost Ellen in the process. He'd fought back against the destruction of the colonies to find a new home...and ended up here. All his fighting had brought him to nothing but nightmares of an ending. He was the fox who had drown trying to swim to someplace safer.

Saul walked out into the water of the eerily calm ocean. To drown in the waters for real, perhaps. But something caught his attention. Just a piece of scrap metal, but there was something familiar about it. Saul picked it up out of the water, driven by an unexplained reason. He flipped it over; there were numbers on the front.

Mailbox numbers. He had seen this before. It was his mailbox. Part of the life he'd had here on Earth. With Ellen.

Suddenly the memory disappeared and Saul saw the water again. It was a cold vast ocean, subtly tempting those who sought complacancy, but it wasn't a safe place at all. Complacancy was never a safe place. Complacancy, giving up, was far more dangerous.

He'd rescued Ellen from that pile of rubble. Escaped the nuclear holocaust of this planet to help another set of people escape the holocaust of theirs. And Ellen had been the one to encourage him.

He didn't know what Bill's reason was, but Saul Tigh now had his. Fight back, it said, and keep fighting until you can't.

**...and one time he didn't**

He wasn't sure that he'd heard the Old Man right. The word out of his mouth couldn't possibly have been "no". After the mess of Earth and the despair it left in the fleet, he couldn't in frak's name understand why the Admiral would say no.

"Could you repeat that Sir?" Saul asked at attention, just to be sure he'd heard right. He wanted to know what the Old Man's reasons were.

"I said 'no' Saul. I'm not sending my only remaining tactical officer out in a raptor to search the univserse for 6 missing crewmen. It's a suicide mission, and you know it," Bill insisted.

Saul knew that. That's why he'd seriously questioned the Lieutenant's request when it had come to him. But he had noticed the desperate, pleading look in the Lieutenant's eyes. All he wanted was the chance. If it was Ellen out there on that raptor, and Saul was the one being given one more chance would he take it? Yes, Saul thought, even for everything he'd endured, he would. But Ellen was long gone, his second chance impossible. Saul owed it to her to give that second chance to somebody else.

"With all due respect sir, I believe you already took your own suicide mission to search for someone you cared about."

Bill Adama balked. Saul Tigh calling him out was a rare thing indeed. And Saul's clear intention of winning was even rarer. "Why do you think this is a good idea?" Bill asked incredulously.

"The kid's got hope," Saul replied simply. "Probably the only one left in the fleet. We need more people like that, Bill. You take hope away from the ones who've still got it and it'll be the end of us."

Saul could see the wheels turning in Bill's head. He was going to let him go. Saul Tigh had finally won a battle against Bill Adama. "Tell him he's got 24 hours." Saul nodded his understanding and turned briskly to go find the waiting Lieutenant.

"You've still got it," said Bill as Saul reached the door.

Saul grunted and turned back around to answer the Admiral. "Got what, Sir?"

"Hope."

"I wouldn't call it hope," Saul said with a smile. "But it's something."

Something called Ellen.


End file.
